


Nightlock, Nightlock

by mllevangogh



Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-14
Updated: 2014-05-14
Packaged: 2018-01-24 17:01:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1612598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mllevangogh/pseuds/mllevangogh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>nightlock, nightlock, in a glass bowl upon a desk. how romantic. seneca knows how it will happen - first his lungs will start to fail. his heart will beat too fast. he will die of hyperventilation, lips turned blue as if he had died of asphyxiation.</p><p>he knows this, in part, because of the girl from district five, whom he watched die the very same way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nightlock, Nightlock

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [star-crossed lovers indeed](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/50039) by trikcster. 



nightlock, nightlock, in a glass bowl upon a desk. how romantic. seneca knows how it will happen - first his lungs will start to fail. his heart will beat too fast. he will die of hyperventilation, lips turned blue as if he had died of asphyxiation.

he knows this, in part, because of the girl from district five, whom he watched die the very same way.

they didn't air it, didn't air that part. they focused on the girl and boy from twelve, their hunting trip, cutting only to the girl from five as she lay there dead, blue lips against her pale skin, hair a luminous red halo. he watched her vitals increase - her heartbeat, which was already fast, speed up until there are beeps filling the control room. he watches her cast a gaze at the camera they'd planted on the tree next to her, and seneca wonders if she is looking for him. 

she's looked at him before, once, that way, right before he carried her to his bed. it is not lust, it is not fear, it is something in between, a look that says i am here, you are here, and seneca will play the footage of those moments, right before her death and right before laying her down on sheets of satin, over and over in his mind.

he had never intended any of it. it had started at the reaping of district five, when she accepted her fate as if trying on a dress, slipping into a role she designed for herself silently and deftly. shoulders back, chin forward, a tentative gaze. the body language at the reaping says everything about a tribute, thinks seneca. twelve had been defiant, one and two had been honored, cocky, eleven had been frightened. but district five - the girl, anyway, had been delicate and complex, eyes betraying a confidence even in their uncertainty. 

seneca watched her train, watched her practiced fingers glide over the plant-matching console, watched her fade into a tree as if she did not exist. (later, he would wonder if she ever really had.)

the other gamemakers argue that she should receive a score of eight, a solid eight, respectable enough to command attention, but somehow seneca bleeds out the words, "no, no, she isn't remarkable at all, just another gatherer, nothing exciting about that," and in the end they give her a five.

he feels it is a small triumph, and later, he will confess the secret into her ribcage, that small victory he achieved for her. she never, in the few weeks they spend together, asks why. she hardly has any questions, though there is a world of answers he could give her, would give her, readily. she could have asked for tips or even secrets, inside information.

but she never does, only lies there while seneca's words and breath spill out over her skin.

"i can't give you any information," he tells her. (she had never asked.) it is mid-afternoon, and they are both supposed to be elsewhere.

"oh, seneca," she breathes onto his skin, hands against his chest. "i understand."

the only question she ever asks is incomplete, a few words mumbled into his neck as he carries her from the door of her room to lie her down on her bed, thin limbs tucked up in his arms: "please - " she begs, never finishing the request. "please."

flushed and tangled, they watch the sun set and then rise again before she retreats to her own room. 

in the end, all he can give her is a dignified death.

"there will be mutts," he whispers into her hair. "please - if you - if you last that long, please don't -"

"i won't," she tells him certainly. "i won't die because of a mutt. they won't touch me."

he kisses her. she tastes like mint and lemon. 

"there's nightlock," he whispers. "there will be nightlock. if - if the time comes -"

"i know," she says, kissing his forehead tenderly. "i know."

in the end, he wonders if he had been part of her plan. it hadn't felt like it, hadn't felt like a strategy, it had felt like he had initiated it all - but in the end, she received her low score and the key to a humane death, and he wonders if she'd just needed that information all along.

she dies with a crooked smile on her lips. he dies with a jagged frown.

nightlock, nightlock, in a glass bowl upon a desk.

how romantic.

~*~*


End file.
